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idk i think a lot of people sort of build up schizo-spec diagnoses in their head as this example of a "clearly biomedical disease that is the scariest possible example of mental illness that is always a crisis no matter what." and i'm not going to sit here and say that schizoaffective is always pleasant to live with, or pretend that it's something that I can manage perfectly-it does cause me distress a lot of the time, and makes some things very difficult. but for me, psychosis is by far not the most difficult symptom i have to deal with, compared to some of the other things that have brought me distress. And yet it's always the symptom that is reacted to with the most fear, confusion, and disgust by other people. I hate it when people generalize psychosis as always and inherently and forever a crisis, and ignore the fact that everyone who experiences psychosis is going to have their own experiences, perspectives on how it impacts them, and that treating psychosis as a super scary, inherently dangerous symptom is incredibly stigmatizing and prevents us from receiving support and care from our communities.
idk. i just really wish people would realize that for some people, psychosis can sometimes be a neutral or even positive experience (i've had some incredibly lovely psychosis experiences), and that by positioning psychosis as a "super scary disease that has no quality of life" and only offering carceral solutions, it perpetuates a pattern where we get continually pushed into harmful treatments. Instead of a situation where our autonomy is respected, where we're offered a wide variety of treatments from meds to therapies to peer support like Hearing Voices Network to material community based support and where we're allowed to define our own experience of psychosis based on how it actually affects us. like, i don't want to deny that psychosis is often distressing for many of us--but I do think we have the responsibility to evaluate where we've learned about psychosis, what societal messages we've internalized about psychosis, what kinds of knowledge about psychosis do we not have access to, and just actually think in depth about how our biases impact how we communicate about psychosis.
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There’s nothing inherently “scary” about someone talking to themself in public.
There’s nothing “scary” about someone rocking back and forth in public.
There’s nothing “scary” about someone pacing back and forth in public.
Some of y’all are just ableist.
#Disability#Disabled#Multiply Disabled#Disabilities#Disability Rights#Disability Justice#Schizophrenia#Actually Schizophrenic#Autistic#Autism#Actually Autistic#Psychosis#Psychotic#Psychosis Awareness#Schizophrenia Awareness#Neurodivergent#Neurodiversity#Neurodiverse#Autism Awareness#Mad Liberation#Mental Illness#Mental Illnesses#Mentally Ill#Disability Awareness#Mental Health#Mental Health Awareness#Anti Ableism#Anti Ableist
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big shoutout to disabled people who smell bad. disabled people who cannot shower regularly. disabled people who sweat a lot and it causes them to smell bad. disabled people who cannot apply deodorant due to mobility restrictions. disabled people who cannot do laundry regularly or at all, and end up wearing dirty clothes for a long time. disabled people who cannot clean their living space, and thus end up smelling bad themselves. disabled people who have any condition or disability that causes body odor. and any other disabled people who smell bad for reasons i didn't mention. i see you and i love you.
(this post is for all disabled people, including mental and physical disabilities)
#this post was made by a cripple who smells terrible#cripplepunk#physically disabled#physical disability#cripple punk#c punk#disabled#actually disabled#mentally disabled#mental disability#mad pride#mad liberation#disability justice
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just wanted to remind everyone again not only of the 3,000+ resources offered through our Liberation Library but also of the study guides for beginners offered under each of our social justice topics!
resources can be organized by type (article, novel, podcast, video, etc.) as well as filtered and searched through. we’ve tried to make our system much more accessible than our former platform on google docs so this is such an exciting development to share with everyone.
please share to promote equitable access education!and if you’d like to volunteer with us, check out our open resources committee roles!
REBLOG THIS VERSION! image description by @bonesandblood-sunandmoon below the cut. thank you for writing one!
[Image Description: Six screenshots of beginner study guides on mobile view. The main text visible under each title reads:
Confused on where to start? Better Future Program has organized a study guide just for you! Use the ‘Search’ and ‘Sort’ tools to view only certain types of resources, like articles for visual learners or podcasts for auditory learners. Back to the master document of Social Justice Resources.
Five of the study guides have the start of a list of resources available with color coded resource types visible - Posts have a purple box, for example. Each study guide has an image. Prison/Policing Abolition has an image of chains, Organizing has two humanoid figures hugging, Classism and Anti-Capitalism has a stack of dollar bills, Anarchism has the red ‘A’ in a circle, Mad Studies has a yellow and orange capsule/pill, and Free Palestine has the flag of Palestine.
/End description.]
#reaux speaks#resources#educational equity#abolition#organizing#anti capitalism#anarchism#palestine#mad liberation#free palestine#israel
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it's so annoying when i criticize a structure or system as being, quite factually, inherently abusive and severely harming the people forced to be in it, and someone comes in with "but people NEED that system? isn't it ableist to say we should get rid of a thing people NEED?"
like i don't know how many more ways i can say "the fact that people literally need this system and rely on it to live means the system doesn't have room to be even mildly flawed, much less actively fucking abusive."
the only available system for legal guardianship being abusive means people die. the only available system for receiving psych medication being abusive means people die. the only available system for income & housing for people too disabled to work being inherently abusive means people die. the people who aren't outright killed by these abusive systems live in abject poverty and under constant surveillance, endure constant trauma, have no legal recourse to escape abuse. the people who are subject to these systems are surviving them, not being helped by them, and that is completely unacceptable. How Much More Clear Can I Get.
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please please please don’t forget to include intellectual disability, psychosis / schizospec disorders, level 2-3 autistics, folks w dissociative disorders, and others with “severe mental illness” from ur conversations about mad liberation.
these are some of the most vulnerable and disenfranchised mad people, and we need to give them a voice.
these are the places where liberation is needed the most
#mad liberation#mad pride#psych survivor#autistic#disabled#sanism#cripplepunk#intellectual disability#psychosis#actually schizospec#schizo spectrum#neurodivergent#level 2 autism#level 3 autism#level 1#actually autistic#disability#queer cripple
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i feel passionately about the need to enfold people experiencing (or diagnosed) with "just" depression or anxiety into the mad pride project. the more people who view themselves as mad, the better. much as the rhetorical move from "neurotypical" to "neuroconforming" emphasizes the artifice & social construction of "neurotypicality," so too will expanding identification as "mad" expose the sane/mad dichotomy as a false one.
it's true that (some) people with "just" depression and/or anxiety have an easier time navigating the psych system than people who have more stigmatized diagnoses. but this is not to say that they necessarily have an easy time — the carceral psych system is hostile to everyone subsumed by it, even the most "privileged" patients. we should of course critique & examine how our experiences are shaped by various intersections of privilege, but we cannot forget or ignore how someone with "just" a depression/anxiety diagnosis can still experience the full force of the carceral psych system brought down upon them (including but not limited to involuntary institutionalization, police intervention, & forced medication or other forced treatment).
we must encourage, if not insist, that those with the least-stigmatized diagnoses view their difficult experiences navigating the psych system as bound up with the liberation of people who have more stigmatized diagnoses &, often, a more violent experience of the psych system. we need more people to drop the "i have anxiety/depression but i'm not crazy" line and say loudly, "i have anxiety/depression & i am crazy. my access to just treatment is linked to the conditions of all other crazy people, who are my allies, peers, & friends. we are united in our cause & we all deserve a more liberating system of care."
#mad pride#mad liberation#disability justice#the way that one IG influencer who called depression & anxiety “vanilla” diagnoses has lived rent-free in my mind for the past five years..#i was soooo upset by that for like three years & now i'm like. okay. it is a little funny.#but also i do think that somewhere in the 'destigmatization'/commodification of anxiety/depression (treatment)#we have lost the plot & forgotten that 'just' these experiences on their own can still be deeply distressing & chronic & endangering#& can make people (be viewed as) just as 'crazy' as someone with a more stigmatized diagnosis#& for me personally my experiences of anxiety & depression have been far more disabling than anything else#sorry i keep editing this post to correct typos...story of my life
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While I’m saying things:
I got into disability liberation through neurodiversity. I identify with the neurodiversity paradigm. I identify as neurodivergent. I believe that the core concept of the neurodiversity paradigm -- that all brains are different, and all brains should be accepted -- is integral to our liberation.
But I’m really getting the sense that “neurodiversity” is becoming to “mad liberation” as “body positivity” is to “fat liberation.”
“Neurodiversity” is being used by behaviorists, therapists, and teachers who are still practicing behaviorism and hierarchy. It’s being differentiated from “mental illness” that needs “treatment.” It’s being applied to plucky, cheerful people who can still contribute to capitalism in their own way, but not to people with extreme emotional states, people who experience voices and visions unknown to others, or people who score very poorly on IQ tests.
It’s not being used to critically interrogate, let alone dismantle, oppressive concepts like “normalcy,” “sanity/insanity,” “competence,” or “general intelligence.” It’s not being used to challenge eugenics, or question whether “mental health” can have a useful meaning outside the pathology paradigm. It’s not being used to imagine what concepts like “happiness” or “good parenting” or “a fair distribution of resources” would even mean in the absence of pathologization, oppression, and hierarchy.
We have to start using “neurodiversity” better if we want it to still have meaning.
#neurodiversity#neurodivergent#mad pride#mad liberation#disability rights#disability justice#mental health#parenting#behaviorism#neurobigotry#sanism
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i hate psychiatry. i hate psychology. i hate the separation of the mind from the body. i hate institutionalism and individualism and pathologization. i hate sanism and the systems of practice and belief that support it.
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To any unmedicated mentally ill people reading this
- Your reason to be unmedicated is valid whatever it may be.
- You're not inherently unstable or dangerous. People shouldn't be afraid of you.
- You're not ruining your health or hurting yourself by being the way you are.
- You're feelings about yourself and your body are not something other people get to choose for you.
- You're not the bad type of mentally ill, or giving the community a bad name.
- You're not somebody else's worst case scenario.
- You deserve to have the community consider your needs and feelings.
- You deserve love and comfort.
#196#my thougts#leftist#leftism#actually autistic#actually adhd#autism#bpd#mental illness#mental health#actually mentally ill#borderline personality disorder#neurodiversity#neurodivergent#neurodiverse stuff#mad pride#mad lib#madlib#madpunk#mad liberation#antipsychiatry#anti psychiatry#anxitey
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^ Just the very beginning of the Wikipedia article on Neurodiversity.
I bring it up here because too many people have picked us this word because they saw it floating around on the internet and understood it quite superficially without engaging with what it actually is: A Framework.
If you use the term "neurodivergent" to describe yourself, you're using/subscribing to this framework, which draws from the social model of disability.
If you call yourself neurodivergent, it mean you are choosing this framework over one where you'd call yourself ill or sick or disordered.
If you are choosing this framework, it means you are choosing a framework that does not pathologise disability.
If you are calling yourself neurodivergent but then turning around and upholding psychiatry as a legitimate science, upholding the DSM as a valid tool rather than the arbitrary ableist racist misogynistic manual that it is, upholding the idea that people need to be diagnosed by an "expert" otherwise they aren't neurodivergent, then you are using 'neurodivergent' superficially and spitting on the face of the neurodivergent movement.
Mad liberation and anti-psych movements have brought us the freedoms we have today, if you are a young neurodivergent person you Need to know your history and your struggles otherwise you end up bootlicking our very oppressors. Psychiatry is a tool of systemic oppression. [More info on this in my pinned for anyone who is new to this idea, please read up a bit it's worth your time]
If you call your neurodivergent please take a moment to look into what the term means and stop upholding psychiatric systems
Stop
Upholding
Psychiatric
Systems
If
You
Call
Yourself
Neurodivergent
#neurodivergent#neurodivergence#mad pride#mad liberation#anti psych#anti psychiatry#actually autistic#actually bipolar#actually adhd#bpd safe#npd safe#endo safe
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saw a post the other day that said that psych survivors were overexaggerating and fearmongering for saying that people should be aware that having diagnoses on your record can be a danger + impede your life. and the more i think about it the more annoyed i am. because i think people need to know that there are exceptions to health privacy laws that can make having psych diagnoses and psych hospitalization history on your record risky depending on your circumstances. diagnoses follow you through your health interactions-you do not have to consent to have your information shared between providers. judicial proceedings are also an exception to the HIPAA privacy rule, so for things like custody battles, guardianship, getting orders of protection--the court can petition for medical records. there's so many other situations where even if they can't legally access your information without your authorization, people will require you to disclose diagnoses, records, previous hospitalizations and refuse to give you services/hire you/whatever unless you share that information with them. for example in many states anyone (a provider, a cop, friends and family) can disclose that you have certain psych diagnoses like bipolar to the DMV which then might require that you undergo drivers license review as frequently as every 3 months. my university is actively trying to kick me out right now because i had to disclose my medical record, psych diagnoses, and hospitalization history to them as a requirement to stay enrolled.
and i don't want to scare people or make people think that having a diagnosis on their records is automatically going to mean that it is weaponized against us. because i do know plenty of people who have never faced issues with their records. but i do expect that the community supports the people speaking out about the ways that we have been harmed by diagnoses creating barriers to accessing necessary parts of our life. instead of attacking us or saying that we're lying about things we are currently experiencing.
#personal#antipsych#antipsychiatry#mad pride#mad liberation#saneism#it's just like. i think we need to be realistic! and not deny people who are literally talking about things happening to them#and also allow people who have the option. to make informed choices about seeking diagnosis#bc for many of us that isn't up to us. but if you are considering seeking formal diagnosis. there can absolutley be some good and helpful#things that come from that! im not denying that at all! but there's also some negatives#and i think also like. if people refuse to acknowlege the ways this is structurally a problem#how are we going to make it better so that we don't have to deal with thsi stuff
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Abolition For Beginners (2023 Edition)
In honor of Tyre Nichols and all others we have lost to policing and imprisonment. In honor of Black History Month. In honor of Better Future Program's mission to educate and serve marginalized youth globally... Let's break down abolition, again. (As usual on Tumblr, tap for better quality.)
Better Future Program's Linktr.ee | Donate | Liberation Library | Open Leadership Positions | Staff Application | Discord Server
Image description below. Written by @reaux07. Proofread by the volunteers and supporters of @bfpnola.
Image Description:
[ID: All of the following slides use a wrinkled, black fabric as their background with black text (bolded red added for emphasis) on top of white boxes with rounded corners. “@bfpnola” is written in the top right corner and the sources for the slide are in the bottom left corner.
Title Slide (No. 1):
Written in red text, “UPDATED FROM 2021 EDITION.” The outlines of the word “ABOLITION” is written line by line 8 times in light grey with the year “2023” written on top in bold, white lettering. Below, written in red within a white bubble and red arrow, it reads “FOR BEGINNERS*.” Across from the bubble, “@BFPNOLA” is in red. Below, in red again, the asterisk mentioned before leads to the following note: “This post is heavily text-based so if you do not learn best by reading, feel free to utilize our Abolition Study Guide in our bio under "Social Justice Resources" instead!” Lastly, white stars and outlines of grey circles can be seen in each corner of the slide.
Slide No. 2 reads:
Abolition is an anti-capitalist, intersectional framework that aims to not only destroy the cages created by various “industrial complexes,” but to create inclusive, effective alternatives for addressing harm. As defined by Dr. Jennie Wang-Hall, an “industrial complex (IC) is a system that creates profit through embedding into social inequities and providing an ineffective product that keeps consumers under-resourced and returning for more.”
The most common examples of such systems? Prison and policing, psychiatry, foster care/family policing, the military, and even the Family (as an institution, not kinship altogether).
Despite common misconceptions, abolition is not just a negation of what currently exists, but an active evolution of what community-based support can and has looked like. Abolition is about the radical working-class imagination, about Black and Indigenous imagination.
If individualistic, reactive, punishment-based strategies are maintained, true accountability and rehabilitation will never exist. Instead, we can choose to be proactive, analyze the circumstances that perpetuate violence, and address harm at the root! Of course, no one is saying that harm will completely cease to exist, but to paraphrase butch anarchist Lee Shevek, wouldn’t it be a profound improvement to expand our capacity to respond to harm and challenge our abusers, rather than being restricted to system-granted authority? Especially when such systems deliberately ignore the suffering of marginalized communities (e.g. people of color, queer and trans folks, women and femmes, Mad and disabled folks, and so on) to begin with?
Sources: @Dr.JennieWH, @ButchAnarchy, Stella Akua Mensah, Erin Miles Cloud, @WokeScientist
Slide No. 3 reads:
Before we continue any further, let’s destroy the myth that cops actually stop violence. First off, we can’t depend on crime stats at face value because this begs the question of who exactly gets to define what counts as a “crime” and why (e.g. drug possession and sleeping in public vs. tax evasion of the wealthy and wage theft). Continuing, crime rates often only reflect violations that have actually been reported, chosen to be shown, and deemed out of line. By this logic, crime rates are simply reflections of cops’ perceptions, not of the material and emotional realities of the proletariat (i.e. the working-class).
As for perpetuating violence, “US law enforcement killed at least 1,183 people in 2022, making it the deadliest year on record for police violence.” (And those are just the deaths that were reported. In our home state of Louisiana, turns out the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, as of January 12, 2023, has been unlawfully destroying records of officer misconduct for at least 10 years.) Many (69%) of these murders were cases in which no offense was alleged, were mental health or welfare checks, or involved traffic violations and other nonviolent offenses.
This is, of course, without even touching on the involuntary servitude (i.e. enslavement) and maltreatment ongoing in American prisons. How many more deaths must occur before the general public says enough is enough? Or is this acceptable since these are working-class, disabled, Mad, non-white, queer, and trans lives being lost?
Sources: @InterruptCrim, The Guardian, Mapping Police Violence, @VeriteNewsNola
Slide No. 4 reads:
So we agree police are harmful. Why abolition instead of reform? Historically, reforms have either provided further funding to the prison, foster care, and psychiatric industrial complexes and/or just reinforced harmful ideologies surrounding policing as a whole. And trust us, these systems already have more than enough money. In the fiscal year of 2021, at least $277,153,670,501 were spent on federal law enforcement and prisons as well as on police and prisons by state and local governments. Can you even conceptualize a number that large? We could end all American medical debt with that much money. We could even provide clean water and waste disposal to everyone on Earth!
Continuing, reforms like body cameras are pitched as making officers more accountable, that if “done right” policing will actually keep people safe, and that those who do not use excessive force are suddenly no longer guilty of perpetuating centuries worth of systemic oppression. In reality, body cameras require further funding and increase surveillance!
Similarly, civilian oversight boards and the push to “jail killer cops” reinforce the belief that cases of murder, assault, falsifying information, and so on are exceptional occurrences rather than intrinsic to the very nature of policing itself. This is where the phrase “All Cops Are Bastards” comes into play, stating that while the individual character of some officers may be morally permissible, all cops are part of a “bastardized,” or corrupt, system.
Sources: Security Policy Reform Institute, Matt Korostoff, @CriticalResistance
Slide No. 5 reads:
Even laws don’t prevent police violence, e.g. the murder of Eric Garner despite the NYPD passing a policy against chokeholds, or the murder of Daunte Wright despite the passing of the George Floyd Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act and a separate Justice in Policing Act of 2020.
Alternatively, we can advocate against the expansion of policing “responsibilities,” i.e. not allowing officers to address Mad individuals in vulnerable states, the housing crisis, or people who use drugs (PWUD). We can reroute funding into non-coercive, peer-led initiatives for harm reduction, de-escalation, first aid, and self-defense. And maybe most importantly, we can reaffirm that EXTENSIVE power can, in fact, be found amongst everyday folks like you and me!
Abolition is not a one-and-done sort of deal but rather a progression of steps toward an infinite future of improvements. The act of building parallel infrastructures and modes of governance while the previous ones still exist is known as dual power. Abolition must begin as dual power. We can start today!
And in building such, these steps cannot: legitimize or expand oppressive systems we aim to dismantle, create divisions between “deserving” and “underserving” people, preserve existing power relations, or utilize exclusionary, one-size-fits-all, standardized treatments.
Sources: @ProjectLets, @HarmReductionCoalition, CrimethInc., Survived & Punished NY
Slide No. 6 reads:
One of the main questions brought up, though, is what abolitionists plan to do in the case of homicide, rape, domestic violence, and other harms. While this is entirely valid, this question seems to imply that 1) police are already effectively responding to such harms rather than perpetuating and/or ignoring them and 2) that there is one collective abolitionist response.
For one, the majority of sexual assault, for example, goes unreported and less than 0.5% of perpetrators are incarcerated. (And this assumes that through the reporting process and incarceration, survivors will somehow find healing, perpetrators will find understanding, and that sexual assault does not continue within prisons.) Meanwhile, let’s use our hometown as one example of many, a complaint of sexual violence is filed against a New Orleans Police Department officer every 10 days and nearly 1 in 5 NOPD officers have been reported for sexual and/or intimate partner violence.
And secondly, we have a plethora of organizations like Critical Resistance and cultures like that of the Diné (Navajo) to learn from and build upon. We don’t have to be stuck within this false dilemma fallacy, that there is only policing or total chaos. Don’t you see that that is the state’s way of constricting communal power?
Sources: @RAINN, @CopWatchNola, @WokeScientist
Slide No. 7 reads:
To expand this conversation, abolition heavily aligns with the political ideal of “anarchism.” Anarchism supports the absence of government and absolute freedom of the individual. And despite its negative connotations, anarchy also reflects an evolution of community-based care rather than just a deconstruction of what currently exists.
A simplified version of its 6 agreed-upon principles are:
Autonomy and Horizontality: define yourself on your own terms, we stand on an equal footing
Mutual Aid: bonds of solidarity form a stronger social glue than fear, support your community
Voluntary Association: associate or don't associate with whomever you wish
Direct Action: accomplish goals directly rather than depending on representatives or authorities
Revolution: overthrow those in power who enforce coercive hierarchies (ex. white supremacy)
Self-Liberation: you must be at the forefront of your own liberation, freedom must be taken
While being an abolitionist does not require alignment with anarchism, it is worth considering how the state plays such an enduring role in various social harms. Concurrently, whenever you treat other living beings with consideration and respect, come to reasonable compromise rather than coercion, and decide to share or delegate tasks, you are already living by anarchist principles.
Sources: Peter Gelderloos, David Graeber
Slide No. 8 reads:
So, how can you get involved? How do we continue the efforts already being made by activists worldwide? After such an overload of information and even more to learn, we understand how political frameworks like abolition can seem daunting, but they don't have to be! Here are some general next steps:
Read the "8toAbolition" steps.
Look into "podmapping" so you know whom to run to when you have been harmed or perpetuate harm.
See if there are any pre-existing mutual aid networks in your community, and if not, start one with your neighbors or peers!
Begin to research issues affecting communities other than your own. Abolition is intrinsically tied to all of us as we are all surveilled. For example, do you understand how prison and policing further ableism, transphobia, or the sex trade? What about policing internationally (see our allies in: the Kingdom of Hawai'i, Palestine, Artsakh, Kashmir...)?
Research the differences between capitalism, socialism, and communism. Abolition and anti-capitalism are foundational to one another as well.
Look into the other industrial complexes we named in the beginning (psychiatry, foster care, the military, the Family...).
Volunteer (remotely or in-person) with organizations like Better Future Program (@bfpnola) to both educate yourself and directly serve your community!
And if you're looking for further reading/listening, BFP offers over 3,000 FREE social justice, mental health, and academic resources in our Linktr.ee, including study guides for beginners. While we can't promise that the struggle for liberation will always be easy, BFP will always do its best to support you in whatever way we know how.
End ID.]
#reaux speaks#signal boost#tyre nichols#keenan anderson#cop city#abolition#abolish the police#defund the police#anti capitalism#intersectional feminism#palestine#black lives matter#blm#bipoc#disability justice#queer#trans#mass incarceration#study guide#mad liberation#psychiatry#family#military industrial complex#foster care#ACAB#tw rape mention#indigenous#anarchism#pinned post#BLACK HISTORY MONTH
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[Disparities in mental healthcare aren't just "therapy is expensive," they are also "rich people get sprawling, expansive, multi-year, relationship-focused psychotherapy while poor people get structured 12-week CBT programs with newly-minted MSWs"]
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Listening to Epic the Musical and went to join the discord server, only to find this:
I'd like to preface this by saying I am a member of a DID system that experienced intense childhood trauma. We identify as "mixed origin", meaning in our case we do not believe trauma was the ONLY cause of our system, but we do believe it likely played a part in the formation of our multiplicity. Now, onto talking about this screenshot.
1. Pluralkit's creators are inclusive of nondisordered systems. It's one thing to say "no OCs" (which pluralkit is fine with, but some servers simply aren't for purposes of ACTUAL roleplay and that's fine), but to say "only OSDD/DID systems are allowed to use this" and imply that all other systems are "roleplaying" is just bog-standard anti-endo bigotry. Also, UDD and other lesser-known disordered systems are of course excluded.
A reminder that the creators of the Theory of Structural Dissociation, the DSM-V-TR, the ICD-11, and the APA all recognize the existence of nondisordered systems, and that they haven't met a high enough standard of proof to claim explicit causation via trauma of dissociative disorders. At this juncture, every actual scientist abides by the cardinal rule of statistics - correlation is not causation - and another important basic rule of logic - that "x causes y" does not prove "ONLY x causes y". Or in other words, neither the converse nor inverse of a true statement are automatically true. In mathematics, these logical fallacies are referred to "affirming the consequent" and "fallacy of the inverse".
2. Short of someone actively telling you "I am faking a mental illness", you CANNOT tell if they are. It's not possible even for psychiatric professionals to determine this, let alone random laypeople. Even screenshots "admitting" faking could be photoshopped, but more than that - that rule makes the server unsafe for every SINGLE system, even those with OSDD or DID. On what grounds do they claim a system is faking? Having the audacity to claim that our narrative of our own experiences is most reliable and that we are capable of determining our own origins? Having too many or too few alters? Enjoying aspects of even disordered systemhood? Achieving functional multiplicity?
Fakeclaiming when done to any kind of system, but ESPECIALLY disordered systems, will often severely worsen dissociation and internal communication and can even make amnesia more severe. Even most professionally diagnosed disordered traumagenic systems struggle a lot with doubt, in part due to the very nature of the disorder, which often is a response formed as coping skill for severe trauma which masks itself from both external and internal scrutiny for safety.
It is not worth risking this harm to "protect" systems this doesn't even help, much like it's not worth say, denying SSI to 90 percent of people who need it just to keep the extremely small fraction of a percentage of fraudsters (who are willing to try to live in conditions of extreme poverty without ever being able to marry or save money) from getting it.
(It also seems to stem in part from a pluralmisic society which obscures and erases the very experience of plurality, so that many of us don't discover the labels for our experiences until late enough in life that it shatters a long-held view of ourselves that we then have to contend with as a fundamental shift in our understanding of ourselves. A similar thing occurs with trans people in transphobic societies doubting our transness due to spending our whole lives thinking we were cis, but just in the wrong way, and that everyone is miserable trying to be their assigned gender at birth.)
3. "Alters under age 13 are not permitted to speak in this server as per Discord TOS." Discord's TOS is entirely dependent on legal age and therefore bodily age. Littles and middles are childlike entities in an adult brain and body, and it is therefore up to each system to determine what is safe for their own non-adult members to handle. While some littles and middles may be very like actual children and therefore their systems restrict their activity, some systems have littles and middles that are perfectly capable of using the adult brains' faculties to safely navigate normal interactions. Note that this isn't a restriction on nsfw interaction, which is strictly prohibited in the server iwrc, which while offensive when done "for littles' safety" is at least something reasonable to refuse consent to interact in that capacity with a little for your own personal comfort.
4. "Factive alters sourced from EPIC collaborators are required to speak through an anonymous proxy or base profile when interacting with the server". So, essentially, the comfort of singlets is more important than the health, functionality, and safety of systems. It can be destabilizing to have to mask or pretend to front as someone else.
It is also saying "it's not okay to be openly an entirely separate individual with your own life, consciousness, and experiences, simply because you were unintentionally created by someone's brain based on a different living individual". In this case, the people saying this also believe the only possible reason for this unintentional influence on an alter's existence is due to a severe mental disorder - that they likely believe is only caused by trauma. (They likely consequently believe alters can only be SPLIT through trauma!)
So what they are in effect saying is "if trauma caused a person to exist inside your brain whose formation was influenced by one of us and who therefore shares a name and maybe mannerisms with one of us, they are not allowed to be openly themselves around us". Imagine if an autistic person who often mirrored mannerisms shared a name with them!
5. Re: the last point. They claim that people using pluralkit are people, but notably, they only recognize them as individuals. They do not recognize the personhood of non-parts based systems. "When speaking with someONE who uses pluralkit, remember you are speaking with A real PERSON". Now, they could be referring to the individual alter fronting at the time (and just not acknowledging cofronting out of ignorance or forgetfulness). Except for the damning line:
6. "Please note that Pluralkit is a bot used by INDIVIDUALS with DID/OSDD to facilitate communication". Now, I wanted to touch on, once again, that pluralkit's creators are open to and even intend for the bot to be used by nondisordered systems and even roleplayers. Once again, I have no issue with servers not allowing its use for roleplay purposes, since that doesn't dehumanize any actual systems nor refuse to recognize the personhood of individuals within any systems. But also... they literally are refusing to recognize the existence of actual DID and OSDD systems who identify as multiple people, not individuals!
While it is possible that the creators of Epic the Musical were simply trying to create a safe space for systems and are simply ignorant to the harm that sysmedicalism and creating a culture where fakeclaiming is allowed and even encouraged DOES, I find it more likely that a moderator, creator, or system that is close to one of the above is a sysmedicalist.
Below the cut for brevity of this post is a primer on system discourse (syscourse) and sysmedicalism for those that may not be immersed in the plural community.
Tl;dr of the part above the cut: This server is unsafe for even DID/OSDD systems, discriminates against and violates the autonomy of littles and factives (misunderstanding what littles and factives actually ARE in the process), and does not recognize the actual personhood of alters and headmates and multiplicity of disordered systems. This is just ableism, and extremely disappointing as a DID system that is a fan of the musical.
For those that don't know, sysmedicalists are plurality's version of transmedicalists. They believe that the only way to be many people or parts in one body (which is what plurality is) is to have a severe mental disorder that causes extreme distress and dysfunction, as a result of severe long-term childhood trauma, usually between the arbitrarily named ages of 9 and 12. Like transmedicalists, they believe that multiplicity is inherently a mental illness, and that you can't be plural if you don't experience extreme distress around it.
To be a [identity]medicalist is to pathologize and medicalize an experience that is not inherently either to the point of claiming all nonpathological and nonmedical forms of the experience don't exist, and usually also involves defining an identity primarily by the severe distress it CAN cause in some individuals, staging an arbitrary standard of suffering as a prerequisite that if not met is grounds for fakeclaiming anyone who derives any happiness or positivity of any kind from said identity.
They claim that a term coined and primarily used by trans systems is transphobic, because "transness isn't a mental disorder and systemhood is!" They fail to recognize that like transmedicalists truly believing transness is only a mental disorder incorrectly, they are also clinging to a claim that only the disordered form of a wider experience of being "many in one" is valid or real, and that everyone else are just "fakers" "stealing resources from real trans people/systems".
See iirc @livseses wonderful post for further similarities on transmed and sysmed arguments, which I will link later if I can find.
On the other hand, even psychiatric professionals, in an industry known for disregarding the experiences of neurodivergent and mentally ill people in favor of the narratives that neurotypicals with degrees in the subjects of our lives make up based on their external experiences of us, agree that nondisordered systems can exist. Most now also believe that trauma is not a prerequisite for plurality.
The DSM acknowledges cultural experiences such as mediumship (not all of which are from closed practices), and the ICD goes further to state that the same experience of "two or more distinct personality states" they describe as one of the requirements for DID does not "indicate the presence of a mental disorder". They also use cultural multiplicity as one example, clearly stating that the same experience of multiplicity present in DID can be present in the absence of a disorder.
These disorders are also very purposely not categorized in the "trauma disorder" section of diagnostic manuals, but rather in a section for "dissociative disorders". Even personality disorders, which are well-recognized as being mostly traumagenic in origin, are also not categorized as trauma disorders, for the same reasons of both lacking a high enough standard of proof that trauma is the only possible cause, as well as for the simple reason that dissociative and personality disorders are much more highly self-similar than they are to trauma disorders. Anyone claiming that "DID/OSDD are trauma disorders" and that to claim to the contrary is misinformation is themselves spreading anti-scientific misinformation.
It is also worth noting that by all modern definitions of disorderedness, a mental disorder requires either distress or dysfunction (and in some cases, both). Therefore, a DID or OSDD system that achieved functional multiplicity would not longer be considered functionally disordered.
Traumagenic is the term used to describe systems formed due to trauma. There is zero proof whatsoever that the trauma that forms a system is required to occur in childhood, and in fact seemingly previously healthy war veterans have been acknowledged in medical literature as displaying symptoms of complex dissociative disorders. While there is not a high enough burden of proof to discount the possibility that every single case was just a covert system's presentation made overt by the recurrence of trauma or development of PTSD, there is likewise not proof that trauma that occurs later in life (particularly for neurodivergent individuals with developmental disorders, as the parts of our brain involved in multiplicity often develop in different orders or at different rates.
Endogenic is the term used to describe systems formed for reasons other than trauma (and by most members of the community, for mixed origin systems that were not FULLY formed from trauma. The coiner maintains that full lack of trauma is required for "correct" use of the label; see my previous posts about the harm of prescriptivism and the ludicrousness of defining a term for an identity you don't claim and a community you are not in).
Endogenic does not necessarily mean nondisordered, as anything from trauma occurring after initial system formation to simply the brain's "wires" getting crossed, so to speak, may be able to cause a dissociative disorder even in the absence of the usual stimuli of trauma. Basically, if your brain has a "push in case of emergency" button, there's always a possibility however many failsafes are built to prevent this happening that it will accidentally be set off in the absence of an emergency. Likewise, traumagenic does not inherently mean disordered, as in the case of previously disordered systems who achieved functional multiplicity, or again, weirdness in an extremely complex organ we barely understand causing the brain to push the emergency button but only part of the stuff that is supposed to be caused by the button happening.
Plurality is simply a form of neurodivergence. People can be multiple consciousnesses or "people" (the defining of which falls more under the purview of philosophy than psychiatry) in one body without there needing to be a reason. Assuming singlecy (being a singlet, a nonsystem) is the default is as based in pluralmisia as assuming being straight is the default is based in homophobia.
It's also worth noting that the majority of psychiatry and psychology, as soft sciences, are based entirely in self-reporting. While yes, dissociative disorders can obscure knowledge of trauma until a system is ready to process said trauma, in the absence of any other notable amnesia or other disordered symptoms, it's actually more likely just from a logical standpoint alone that a person is simply right about saying "there are multiple people in this body" than they are unaware of trauma, let alone just "roleplaying" or "faking". There are simply too many endogenic systems for that to be the case.
Why would total amnesia around exactly the chronological bounds of the trauma, despite a system not having any periods of time missing from their memory, be the ONLY symptom experienced? In a society where even if you HAVE a disorder treatment is often inaccesibly expensive and the majority of people regard anyone who identifies as multiple as "insane" at best and "dangerous and needing to be locked up" at worst, what is to be gained from identifying as plural if that's not truly who you feel you are? It's the same tired arguments of nonbinary and nondysphoric/nontransitioning trans people in general just "pretending to be trans for fun". No one does that!
Also, traumatized people are not helpless crazy people that need "help" being paternalistically told what our "actual" experiences are because we're too ill to ever be right about our own lives and ESPECIALLY our subjective internal thoughts, emotions, and ways of experiencing the world and our selves. That's just extremely basic foundational sanism.
Some will claim it's not "for fun" but as a result of delusions or other mental illness that endogenic systems "claim to exist". They claim that delusional and mentally ill people need to be forced into treatment "for our own good", even if the alleged delusions are neither causing distress for us, dysfunction in our lives, or influencing us to act in ways which cause any material or quantifiable harm to others. And no, being offended by the existence of a subgroup of people within a marginalized group is not harm. That's just bog-standard bigotry.
This is also just basic sanism. It's the idea that if someone holds uncommon beliefs or is in any way abnormal, that those beliefs and abnormalities need to be suppressed and stamped out for "our" own good and for the good of society. It's the same (fascist) rhetoric that causes everything from autism [Coolsville sucks] spe/aks seeking a eugenicist "cure" for autism to white supremacy. Note: neither autistic people nor nonwhite people nor any other marginalized group are inherently "abnormal". They are simply minorities LABELED as such by those in power.
I know someone might try to take that line out of context to claim that I AGREE that marginalized peoples are abnormal, coolsville-sucks-style, hence my clarification and inclusion of that in brackets to make any bad faith actors have to at least black it out if they want to screenshot that out of context. That way, anyone bothering to actually fact-check will see immediately that they are twisting my words and acting in bad faith. I've been around the syscourse block long enough to know people WILL do this.
There's further arguments to be made that "normality" is simply a descriptor for things that do not significantly deviate from arbitrary averages and that abnormality itself is therefore morally neutral, but I digress.
I do however, want to encourage people to look into the subject of "mad liberation" for more on questioning and challenging the assumptions that anyone with any mental disorders or trauma is incapable of being a reliable source on their own experiences and existence.
Anyway, plurality has existed for as long as humans have been recognizably human. Many past and present peoples acknowledge forms of it, both in open and closed cultures. Most reputable psychiatrists and psychologists acknowledge the existence of nondisordered and endogenic systems, and further studies are being done into this form of neurodivergence already. The few professionals that don't are typically those like the ones present in the video released by McLean Hospital which fakeclaimed actual professionally-diagnosed disordered systems (which also goes to show just how fakeclaiming only ever ends up harming the people it's claiming to be used to try to protect).
Finally, "plural" is a term coined specifically to be inclusive of all systems, regardless of origin or disordered status. Plural was never a term that belonged only to disordered traumagenic systems, and to claim so is to actively speak over the inclusive systems responsible for coining the term and spread misinformation.
Tl;dr Endogenic and nondisordered systems exist, are valid, and should be believed about the ways they experience their own consciousnesses and brain. This is backed even by doctors in the field of "dismiss people who have abnormal experience of consciousness and supplant their narratives with what neurotypicals THINK is going on based on how we experience the actions of neurodivergent people. Trauma is not the only way to form a system, and intensely distressing mental illness is not the only way to BE a system.
The Epic the Musical server is unsafe for any systems, which as a DID system, makes us feel sad and angry and hurt.
Anti-en/dos, just block us. Even if you can come up with a new argument instead of the same repetitive and inane misinterpretations of scientific literature (or those actively disproven by scientific literature, no less) and pseudoreligious baseless beliefs about plurality, all I would do is tear apart the foundation of the new "argument" for bigoted exclusionism. I've already weighed more evidence than you've ever read, and I won't be convinced that this time the group just trying to live their lives and be accepted as they are is ACTUALLY harmful evil invaders faking and stealing resources because trust you bro. We also know more about our own mixed origins than you as a stranger are capable of ever discerning.
We've been harmed enough by fakeclaiming as a multiply physically disabled and neurodivergent queer traumaendo DID system to ALWAYS side with the people against fakeclaiming anyway, we BELIEVE minorities and especially neurodivergent people about what's going on inside their heads, and quite frankly, we just don't like exclusionist bigots (like you) and don't want exclusionist bigots (like you) interacting with our posts.
#epic the musical#ableism#traumagenic#endogenic#ant//i end//os DNFI#discourse cw#sanism#mad liberation#madpunk#pluralpunk#plural
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i think i may actually make this into shirts or stickers bc i like it so much
#art#small artist#artist#tumblr art#art on tumblr#disabled artist#queer artist#autistic artists#cripplepunk#mad liberation
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